The Best Cruise This Side of Krawk Island: Barf Boat

Many of you may be familiar with the cruises you can take off the coast of Mystery Island; however, I am sure that very few of you have heard of the cruises offered on the Barf Boat, one of Krawk Island's mystifying petpet cruises. Courtesy of Captain Arf, the grass really IS greener on the other side – and you'll see it all over the boat if you stick around long enough!

In case you are unfamiliar with the hobbies of Captain Arf, he is responsible for controlling the garbage population of Krawk Island. Of course, how can one little Warf rid an entire island of its garbage? By eating it, of course! Once the Golden Dubloon shuts its doors for the night, this sneaky little pirate gobbles down all the food and sets sail with his fearless crew. Alas, the waves, they are a-rockin and a-tumblin, and the same can be said for Captain Arf's secret meal. If you dare join Captain Arf, your responsibility is to keep the boat sailing by maintaining his crew on board.

Barf Boat can be played in two different modes: normal and extreme. In normal mode, you are on a standard sized ship, while in extreme mode, you are relegated to a tiny rowboat which looks like it cannot withstand the gargantuan waves of the sea. In both modes, your objective is clear: keep the crew on the ship and avoid the water! Although you earn more points in extreme mode, it is far more difficult, and the crew easily leaps out of your grasps. As a result, extreme mode is not recommended for the faint of heart (or anyone trying to earn a high score without jumping ship themselves!).

The controls in Barf Boat are relatively simple. The petpets move left and right using the left and right arrows, and they can also jump up using the space bar, which is extremely important in avoiding bombs (discussed in a later section).

Barf Boat appearances:

Positive:

Multiple petpets: after the first petpet, which is worth 3 points, each additional petpet will be worth 2 points. As a result, it is in your best interest to have as many petpets on your boat as possible at once. However, be reasonable. If your abundance of petpets is causing your boat to tip to one side such that they will probably all fall off, rebalance the ship and allow several to fall off. You will not be penalized for this; the only downside is you will not be earning as many points, but your game will go on! Likewise, if you are having trouble balancing a large number of petpets on your boat for any reason, allow some of them to drop off. Captain Arf will most likely be offended, but his emotions are not your concern in this game.

Coins: coins may come up from below the deck several times throughout the game. They can be worth as little as 30 points all the way up to several hundred so try to go for them if you can. Obviously, do not risk your game for the coin. Remember that if you lose ALL the petpets from the ship, you lose the game. There are NO extra lives.

Negative:

Bombs: on occasion, a bomb may come up from below the deck. This is VERY bad because if the bomb is near one of your petpets, it will knock it clear off of the boat. This is doubly VERY bad if you only have one petpet because you do not have any petpets to spare. Therefore, you must rebalance the boat such that the bomb is on the opposite side of your petpet or make sure that your petpet is in the air when the bomb goes off. The best case scenario is that you push the bomb off the boat and do not have to worry about any petpets falling off. Unfortunately, the best case scenario is rarely the most realistic scenario, so you must do with what you have. Every situation is different, so sometimes you will want to employ the jumping strategy and sometimes you will want to employ the rebalancing strategy, but here are my recommendations on when to use each. When you have multiple petpets on the ship, rebalancing will probably work the best for you. Here is why: when there are multiple petpets and you press spacebar, they will all jump up. When they're in the air, you will press either the left or right arrow to knock the bomb off of the boat (whichever side it is closest to). If the bomb falls off, that's great, right? Not quite! When the petpets come back down, your rotation of the boat will cause them to land in a different spot from where they started, and it may cause a bunching of petpets on one end which will tilt the boat to that direction. The weight may be too great, and ALL of the petpets will fall off the ship. Arrgh! As a result, for situations when there's 3 petpets or more, it would be in your best interest to tilt the ship and sacrifice a petpet just so that the bomb does not disturb the other petpets on the ship. When you have 1 or 2 petpets, you can rebalance, but you can also do the jumping strategy. Just press space bar, rotate the ship so that the bomb rolls off, and allow the petpets to come down.

Other Tips and Strategies:

Rebalancing is sometimes difficult to master, but just remember that you are the middle of a seesaw. Do NOT mash your keyboard's left and right arrows. This is not a competition to see if you can obliterate those keys. Alternate between the two keys so that the ship stays relatively even without tilting to any one side. However, if your ship does happen to tilt in one direction and it looks like you are in danger of losing your petpets, mash away! Make sure you hold down the key opposite to the side that is tilted until the boat returns to an even position.

If possible, allow your petpets to have some space in between them. This makes it easier for new petpets to join from below the deck without creating an uneven weight balance and also makes it easier to balance the ship in "regular" conditions because the weight is distributed.

Sometimes you may have to use the rebalancing and jumping strategies simultaneously when getting rid of bombs. By this I mean that you press the space bar to allow the petpets to jump, and while they are in the air, you rebalance the ship so that when they land, they do not slide off. This will come more naturally to you the more you play!

DO NOT PLAY IF GREEN BARF UPSETS YOU! Captain Arf has a weak stomach and has a tendency of barfing during the journey.

That's all for my tips and tricks! I hope you enjoy your voyage on the Barf Boat. Happy travels!